Tech/Archives/2026

Wikisource download not working for English

I don't know whether this is the appropriate place to note this; if not, please direct me to the appropriate site. The download tool for English Wikisource (ws-export.wmcloud.org) is not working. I have tested this using the EPUB download links for several texts ([1] [2] [3]) on several different browsers, both mobile (using iOS 7.4.1) and desktop (using Windows 10), and according to [4] other people have been seeing the same problem for almost a month now. On a mobile browser, the export site doesn't load at all; on a desktop browser it returns either a 503 Service Unavailable error message, or an Anubis bot-checking page which does nothing for about 20 seconds before giving a 503 error, or sometimes the message "This web service cannot be reached. Please contact a maintainer of this project." However, the site does seem to work for the Wikisource wikis in at least some languages other than English; in some cursory testing I saw it work for Polish [5] and Latin [6] but not Greek [7]. This problem has been noted on English Wikisource's main talk page (as linked above) around the beginning of this month, apparently without anyone noticing; I am reposting it here so that whoever is responsible for maintaining Wikimedia wiki software will know that this needs to be fixed. - LaetusStudiis (talk) 22:37, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

@LaetusStudiis The person to contact about this would be @Samwilson. Sohom (talk) 21:09, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

@LaetusStudiis and Sohom Datta: Thanks for the ping. This is a known issue, indeed. I've got some ideas for how to improve things, and am hoping to make some progress soon. Sam Wilson 02:05, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

Virus?

https://imgur.com/a/GARH0kq Does MediaWiki have a virus? I downloaded it directly from the website https://releases.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.45/mediawiki-1.45.1.zip ~2026-49761-6 (talk) 11:00, 23 January 2026 (UTC)

Hi, this page is for Wikimedia wikis. For MediaWiki, please ask at mw:Project:Support_desk, and include basic information (what does your screenshot show exactly? Where does your screenshot come from exactly? What "virus"? How could someone else reproduce what you see?). Also, please upload images in a better place - visiting imgur.com requires dozens of clicks in their dialogs (which do not offer a 'Refuse all' button) not to sell my data to their ~250 advertisement company partners. Thanks. AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 12:22, 23 January 2026 (UTC)

Age of voting

Hello I was looking through the voting ages for countries on your wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_majority and it seems that the age of voting for Canada is wrong. It is not 19 but 18 instead for itself and all of it's provinces. Thank you for your understanding and hopefully you can fix this typo soon. ~2026-59577-5 (talk) 18:47, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

Hi, please bring this up on the discussion page of that article itself, or in an English Wikipedia discussion forum on English Wikipedia. Thank you! --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 19:55, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

Recent Uptick in Scraping

Hi there, I am in contact with a sysAdmin from a big open data project who told me that in the last 48 hours there has been a massive uptick in bots scraping his websites. We are talking about more than 300,000 residential IP addresses. I was wondering if Wikimedia has been experiencing the same issues recently. If so, who could I talk to for more information? Thanks y'all! Amotaouakkil (talk) 18:27, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

Global default signature

Is there a way to change my default signature on all wikimedia wikis? It isn't in Special:GlobalPreferences but if such a feature exists I would find it very helpful. Thanks. lp0 on fire () 22:20, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

@lp0 on fire I don't believe that there currently is, no. (In case you're interested, there's a Phabricator task requesting that feature at phab:T188200.) Best, ‍—‍a smart kitten_[meow] 22:36, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

Thanks. Oh well, it was worth a try. lp0 on fire () 22:37, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

Also, thanks for making the effort to put my username in lowercase; I appreciate it :) lp0 on fire () 22:39, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

error on Angika (anpwiki): मोड्यूल:Citation/CS1/Utilities में पंक्ति 38 पर लुआ त्रुटि: bad argument #1 to 'ipairs' (table expected, got nil)

• example url: https://anp.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%B2 * मोड्यूल:Citation/CS1/Utilities was last updated 3 months ago by user @Angpradesh (sysop) (https://anp.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%AF%E0%A5%82%E0%A4%9C%E0%A4%B0:Angpradesh) seems to be mia
• the situation is aggravated (https://anp.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%E0%A4%87%E0%A4%B8%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%B2%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%AE&diff=22772&oldid=22764) by InternetArchiveBot edits

কল্কি (talk) 13:51, 2 February 2026 (UTC)